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Lofty Words, Feeble Action on Energy, Research Funds, Says SPIE

BELLINGHAM, WA--(Marketwire - December 21, 2007) - The world has taken a double blow from the
U.S. Congress and Administration in the unseemly haste to make bad
compromises to get home for the holidays or back on the campaign trail,
said Eugene Arthurs, CEO of the optics and photonics society SPIE.

Arthurs called the Energy Bill passed by Congress this week "a sad
capitulation to the past" in the face of an energy-related environmental
crisis. "The bill does little to address the fossil fuel addiction of the
United States and the rest of the developed world or the acceleration
toward the same ailment of the three billion or so people in the emergent
nations. The promise of renewable energy and energy efficiencies such as in
lighting, initiatives that require government leadership, have been
deferred or abandoned," he said.

The second blow was the failure to adequately increase support for science
and technology, Arthurs said. There is a widely recognized need to ensure
the research activity and talent to tackle these and other problems, and to
enable progress and security. However, support for the major science and
technology (S&T) agencies has been essentially appropriated away.

"As part of the S&T community, we need to become more activist about the
grave issues facing our world," Arthurs said, pointing out the community's
responsibility to propose and evaluate technical solutions and go beyond
detached observation.

"We need to communicate much better with the public and with the decision
makers we have elected," he said. "We in the 'hard sciences' need to
interact more closely with our colleagues in economics and the social
sciences to understand the viability of proposed solutions.

"Renewable energy is much more than a set of formidable scientific and
engineering challenges. Significant change will only happen in 'the real
world,' where our contribution is not just technically, but socially
practical. SPIE will continue to work for our mutually entangled futures."

"Fat, dumb and happy"

Philanthropist Eli Broad, who gave $1.22 billion to education and
scientific research from 2003 through 2007, is among those who see quality
of education as one of America's biggest problem. "If you see what is
happening in other countries -- China, India, Korea, Japan, elsewhere --
they are doing a far better job at educating their children. Frankly, in
America we have become fat, dumb and happy," he said in a November 2007
interview in the Financial Times.

Norman Augustine, chairman of the National Academies Committee that
produced the 2005 report "Rising Above the Gathering Storm," this fall
presented an 82-page essay highlighting two critical issues that must be
corrected: what he characterizes as America's "failing" K-12 education
system, and insufficient federal funding of basic research.

In his essay, "Is America Falling Off the Flat Earth?," Augustine asserts
that "U.S. federal support of research in the physical sciences,
mathematics, and engineering -- when adjusted for inflation -- has been
stagnant for two decades... as a percentage of GDP, federal investment in
research in the physical sciences and engineering has been reduced by more
than half since 1970."

He notes that, "For the first time, the world's most powerful particle
accelerator does not reside in the United States; this virtually ensures
that the next round of breakthroughs in this fundamental discipline will
originate abroad."

M. J. Soileau, Vice President for Research and Commercialization at the
University of Central Florida, sees a disregard in planning for the future.
"We have crossed the threshold and now import more knowledge-based
production than we export. Of 25 major IPOs last year, three were in the
U.S. Seven years ago we crossed the threshold in STEM graduate education
wherein more than half of the graduates now come from outside the U.S., and
now we are making it hard for international students to come here to study.
Meanwhile, Asia and Europe are investing heavily in science and technology
research, while we're eating our seed corn, spending billions of dollars on
war and building concrete barricades around buildings. We've saddled our
children with debt and we're not making the investments that will give them
the tools to pay off that debt."

Donald O'Shea, Emeritus Professor of the Georgia Institute of Technology
and Editor of the journal Optical Engineering, notes a drop in submissions
to the journal from U.S. researchers as part of the trend. "Only with the
reversal of this crippling of scientific funding can more speculative
investigations be done that can provide great advances required to remain
competitive in the years to come."

SPIE President-Elect Kevin Harding said research needs the support of both
government and industry to provide solutions for our changing future. "As a
facilitator, SPIE provides a forum for critical information exchange
essential for such development, but must also provide a clear, collective
input to government and industry leaders on the needs to get the job done,"
Harding said. "SPIE has long been recognized as a well-connected
organization with representation from industry, academia and government
both in the U.S. and internationally. As a society, we plan to aggressively
work to strengthen those connections with the hope of driving
the science and technology strategies of the future."

About SPIE

SPIE is an international society advancing an interdisciplinary approach to
the science and application of light. Serving the interests of its more
than 188,000 active constituents representing 138 different countries, SPIE
acts as a catalyst for collaboration among technical disciplines for
information exchange, continuing education, publishing opportunities,
patent precedent, and career and professional growth. As the organizer and
sponsor of approximately 26 major conferences and education programs
annually in North America, Europe, Asia, and the South Pacific, SPIE
provides publishing, speaking, and learning opportunities on emerging
technologies. For more information, visit http://SPIE.org.